Is gaining Freddy’s money worth losing Eugene’s vision?

Monday

Mar 21, 2011 at 12:01 AM

As a writer of Oregon history for the last 20 years, I have been asked at different times to comment publicly on the unique quality of Eugene’s history and character.

The questions usually go something like this: “Has Eugene always been heavily civic-minded?” or “Can you tell me what events from the past help us understand this willingness to sacrifice now for the benefit of future generations?”

Yes, I can tell you. I can tell you how two of the original white settlers, Eugene Skinner and Charnel Mulligan, donated parts of their adjoining homestead land claims to Lane County in the 1850s so that a courthouse could be built on what is now the “park blocks” of downtown Eugene, where the Saturday Market is held every weekend from April to November.

I can tell you how in the 1870s the city residents worked to have the University of Oregon located here. They didn’t have enough money to pay outright for the building, so they brought in things that could be converted to cash: pigs, chickens and cows, a box of apples, a bushel of wheat — whatever their farms had produced.

I can tell you how the Eugene area in the mid-19th century was almost barren of trees, and how the people took it upon themselves to plant the shade trees that would eventually give the neighborhoods their cool sidewalks on hot summer afternoons.

I can tell you about the choice voters made in 1937, in the depths of the Great Depression. With 60 percent approval, they decided to tax themselves and buy a wooded hill outside the city limits so that it wouldn’t be logged off and turned into a grazing pasture for a herd of goats. It became what we now call Spencer Butte Park.

As the city grew toward the south hills in the 1950s, citizens had another choice. They could pave over a section of swampy land and build housing developments, or they could build around it and create a narrow parkway that followed a creek. Today we have Amazon Park.

Not every decision has become a point of pride. Closing off downtown streets in the 1970s and creating an open-air pedestrian mall in a region where it rains nine months of the year didn’t quite turn out the way the projects’ boosters had hoped.

It didn’t help that in the years immediately preceding, a wave of urban renewal projects replaced the core blocks of historic buildings with impersonal edifices that soon enough became empty and dark, some of them remaining so for years.

However, the decision to keep the Hayward Field grandstand on the University of Oregon campus and build around it rather than razing the original structure built in 1925 has solidified the field’s iconic status as the spiritual home of American track and field.

Now we are facing another decision regarding a historic athletic field. The Eugene School Board will soon vote on the future of Civic Stadium, the 73-year-old ball park at 20th Avenue and Willamette Street that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

It will be an interesting vote, for not only was the stadium built through the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression, it was also deeded to the school district — with the stipulation that it be used as a recreation area for both the district and the municipality.

The board designated the stadium “surplus property” in 2002. In 2010, the board issued a request for proposals to acquire the stadium and surrounding property.

The school district received three bids. One is from Save Civic Stadium, a local group offering to lease the land, refurbish the grandstand, construct an indoor field house and host a professional soccer team and youth sports.

Another bid comes from the Eugene YMCA, which offers to buy or lease the land. It proposes to build a recreation and community center, along with apartments, but not to preserve the grandstand.

A third offer proposes to build a Fred Meyer department store and “mixed use development.”

A committee of school district employees and a real estate consultant recently ranked the bids according to a board-approved scoring chart in this order: Fred Meyer, YMCA, Save Civic Stadium.

I cannot tell you which way the school board will vote. But I can tell you that reporters in the future will not be asking me about a time when the citizens of Eugene cared less for a historic ball park than they did for money from a department store.

Steve McQuiddy is a former editor of the Lane County Historian. He teaches writing at Lane Community College.

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